Left to our own devices for the first time in more than a week, we set off to the north and east to see the fortified town of Bourtange on the German border. We broke the journey Tuesday at Groningen, our most northerly stop to date.
Because it was a drizzly, chilly day that didn’t lend itself to sightseeing, and because of our ill-advised decision to wear ourselves out walking to town rather than taking the bus from the campground, we have little to say about Groningen. Instead, two digressions:
1. In place of the initial ‘G’ in the city’s name, we cognoscenti (!) substitute a throat-clearing ‘Hkk’, thus: ‘HKKRON i gen’. And the ‘r’ is rolled. Further, a favorite dessert is pronounced ‘Fla’, even though it is spelled VLAG in Friesian. (Frisian, you will quickly learn, is a separate language, not a mere dialect of Dutch. Vlag, incidentally, is a delicious runny pudding, sold in quart-sized milk-like cartons, flavored vanilla or chocolate (of course) or strawberry, raspberry. . . .)
2. The Dutch cities and towns we’ve seen have looked extremely prosperous: long shopping streets, few or no shuttered storefronts, successful open-air markets in addition to lots of upscale shops--many of them European and American chains--and large crowds. Groningen was no different, and the presence of about 20,000 university students probably didn’t hurt its economy, either.
One of the relatives we met told us, with evident pride, that his university-educated son was making a much larger salary than he, his father, was. The American Dream is doing OK in Holland.
Bourtange is a fortified village rebuilt to its 1742 glory, when it stood astride the routes other nations used to supply Dutch towns they occupied. It was begun in 1580, built in the shape of a five pointed star with triple moats and earthworks, allowing the defenders to fire upon invaders from at least two different angles--very clever and interesting. Lots of little rooms and shops to peek into. “It’s as if time had stood still,” say the town’s advertisements: well, yes, if you ignore the gift shops and the tourists and the cars.
We would like warmer weather, so we did 119 miles today, some on a direct south motorway in Germany where the roads were noticeably worse and the traffic noticeably faster. We are heading back to the storage place south of Amsterdam with some questions and then on south. We are parked in Zwolle at our first real camperstop: basically a public parking lot with spaces marked for motorhomes for € 5 a night. We are a little more at ease with driving after having a week off and learning a few more signs and rules of the road. We have also seen very large trucks on very small streets almost everywhere, so we know we are not the biggest thing on the road. We watched in awe today as a large truck pulling a semi trailer went around a tight corner in front of us. Nothing seems to deter them; we look carefully ahead.